1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to the distribution of interactive media with musical content to a group of recipients on their mobile phones; and more particularly to a network where an artist distributes his creation to his fans for initial feedback prior to an official release of his creation into a market.
2. Related Art
Quite often when an artist creates a new art work and releases it into a market, the artist has very limited information on how successful it is likely to be in the market. Often a CD of music that is released into a market flops and goes into oblivion at great financial loss to the producers and to the artist. Currently there is no system that can help with reducing the risk involved in releasing a new artistic product, such as a new music created, a new set of photographs, or a new painting, into the market. There are really no simple means of gathering opinion on a newly created music before a CD/media is released, from a cross section of the market. If the buyers of the songs are not satisfied with the contents in a newly purchased CD/media, they lose money the spent in buying it. The dissatisfied buyers are likely to be “once bitten twice shy”. This often leads to a loss of popularity for the artists who have contributed to the new CD and to the producers or the music company that markets them.
The manpower that is typically needed in the form of sales representatives or in the form of some focus groups to gather market opinion, or conduct trials is quite prohibitive in cost and is not very effective in predicting how successful the released content is actually going to be in the market. Inaccurate statistic gathered by salesmen or vendors during such a process will mislead the music company causing heavy losses. Misinterpreted market forecasts and some unforeseen market trends often lead to wrong marketing plans and hence loss to the producers or the company. Finally the whole process results in an unexpected outcome in the market and often the hard-earned reputation of the company and the artist is lost.
Current marketing strategy through the existing media outlets such as TV, internet, and other forms involve spending huge money for ads that promote a new product/CD/song that is released into the market. All of these techniques are uncertain in their outcomes as far the release of new CDs/songs is concerned and it difficult to really know the reception in the market in advance by the technique of advertisements on such media outlets. In such occasions it's very tough to make decision on in the volume of inventories that need to be created, and predictions of large demands of music/audio CDs released into the market often prove wrong. Once a new CD/DVD is released in large volumes, if buyers or the customers offer a poor response, or express a negative opinion, it could lead to recall of the CDs/DVD from the market, an extremely dangerous situation for the manufacturers and retailer as a lot of money may already have been spent.
Current methods/techniques of online marketing for entrainment-related media, such as music or audio CDs, are difficult, especially in reaching a common customer who does not have a PC or access to the Internet. Because online selling of such entrainment media is made easy through PCs/computers, at present marketing companies are focusing on Internet sales. However, a significant portion of the world population lack access to computers and the Internet, but are still an important segment of buyers of new CDs/DVDs, etc. The percentage of music listeners is much larger than the percentage of people who have access to PCs and the Internet, and generally they may not have access to computer. So there is a need to efficiently reach out to the larger population and provide them with information regarding new CD releases that hit the market.
The current methods of marketing and advertisements do not facilitate any means of information sharing by like minded individuals with and similar tastes and habits. There are limited means for such people to group together to share their views on a product, such as music, video, etc. Some web portals provide a web community for sharing such information. Again, a significant portion of the people of the world cannot participate in such web communities for several reasons.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art through comparison of such systems with the present invention.